Geoff Beckett

My ‘brushes with aviation’ began in 1930 when, in my pram, I pursued the airship R100 as it flew over my home town, Reading, in Berkshire.

By 1947, I was a student at the Miles Aeronautical Technical School when Miles Aircraft were forced out of business. A few years later, I returned to Woodley airfield as a technical illustrator with Handley Page. I soon moved on to become a staff artist with Temple Press, the publishers of technical magazines, including ‘Aeroplane’. But my rapidly widening experience in many other industries eventually led me away from aviation and, even as a hobby, ‘brushes with aviation’ played virtually no part in my life as I built up a successful Berkshire-based advertising, design and PR business.

All this changed in 1985, when I met Julian Temple who was researching his book ‘Wings over Woodley’ and we began working together, leading a few colleagues from the Berkshire Aviation Group in an attempt to create an aviation museum. When his book was published, Julian moved on to become a curator at the Brooklands Museum and a potential clash of interests led him to resign from the Woodley project. This left me virtually on my own in the efforts to rebuild a derelict hangar that had once been part of the Technical School I had first joined in 1945. It was an eight-year struggle that, thanks to the eventual financial support of Wokingham District Council, saw the museum open with me as one of the first trustees.

The difficult times of the 1990s’ recession preceded many changes in my personal life and, once again, ‘brushes with aviation’ played very little part until, in 1997, I decided to try to paint the story of Berkshire’s aviation heritage. Although I had never painted in oils before, my work was quickly selected for major exhibitions and was soon bringing to colourful life the numerous talks and slide-presentations I still gave around Berkshire and Oxfordshire to widen public awareness of the County’s unique aviation story. Then, unfortunately, my painting activities and many other aspects of my life were curtailed when, in 1999, I suffered a stroke.

At least one positive thing came out of the weeks I spent in hospital learning to walk and use my left arm again — the idea of writing this book. It has developed considerably since it first appeared around 2001, as a small book telling my grandchildren about my early ‘brushes with aviation’, but I hope a much wider audience will now find it just as interesting and informative.